As a startup emerges from the “0” of the “0 to 1” soup, there’s new types of work that suddenly show up. It’s work that doesn’t directly build product or sell customers, but it’s required work to build a functioning org. For most Founders, it’s a distraction that keeps them from the jobs that only they can do: growth, product, and recruitment.
That new work is Internal Operations. You’ve raised money? Cool, now you need to deal with it and report on it. You’ve hired smart people? Great, you need to onboard and spin them up to work together. You want to set goals with your team? Good call, you need coherency for how you talk about them. The work is chaotic, changes every day, and morphs over time as the team grows.
Enter: the Chief of Staff role. You’ve heard of it, right? Of course you have — The title has rocketed to startup land popularity these last few years, serving as the latest title for smart people who do whatever-needs-doing alongside the CEO, and who typically own internal ops until departments are spun out to functional leaders. I’ve yet to meet a Founder who doesn’t want one (top CEO coaches even require their CEOs to hire one), and LinkedIn is full of candidates who want the job. Yet still — the role is misunderstood, and murky at best.
For all those reasons, I’m so glad to introduce you to Elliott Fisher. Elliott is prolific here: He not only built internal operations from scratch inside of 2 startups (employee #6 at Square Roots, leading bizops from Pre-Seed to Series A, and Chief of Staff at Ntropy from Seed to Series A), but has also lead internal ops at scale as Chief of Staff for The Farmer’s Dog (Series D, 550 people). Today, he works as a Fractional COS, Finance and BizOps leader for early stage teams.
I think Elliott represents the best of those who take on these roles: humble, curious, and with a genuine love of building that shines through his stories. What a great reminder that teams are just collections of people working on a problem. Enjoy!
Drop 1. A COS is about leverage. What leverage looks like changes inside a company over time.
“Above all, a Chief of Staff exists to create leverage for a principle.At Ntropy (Seed - Series A), the role was about building from 0 to 1. For example, building out our onboarding our recruitment engine — I was hands on building. While at The Farmer’s Dog (Series D, 550+ people), the foundation existed and worked well. There, I was responsible for the process working effectively.”
Take it back to your team:
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The COS role changes over time as a company grows. There’s lots of great frameworks out there (we like this one from the Chief of Staff Network), but it comes down to leverage for you as the Founder or CEO. Where do you need it right now?
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You might think you want a Chief of Staff “to do everything.” But, when you really map your needs, there are probably “spikes” in the skills you need from someone. Is your role 70% people ops, 30% board relations? Perhaps 30% bizops, 30% finance, 40% people ops? Let the skills dictate the hire you make.
Drop 2. How he started FP&A, Investor Relations, and Accounting without a finance background
“The first thing to do when you don’t know something is to tell someone that you don’t know it. There’s so much power in owning that. I told my CEO that there were parts of accounting I was unsure about, and recommended that I go take online classes. He said — go for it!”Take it back to your team:
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Elliott’s motivation to figure this out was the sheer amount of stuff to do inside Square Roots (then a Seed stage company). How might you motivate your smart, hungry people to learn new skills? Can you supplement with an online course? A mentor or advisor? How might you create a safer place for people to admit when they don’t know something?
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Finance is ultimately storytelling. “Accounting tells us the story of what happened in the past, and you can get creative with that story. But finance tells us the story we want to happen and how we’ll do it.” What story do your models tell?
Drop 3. Lessons from onboarding new hires on a globally remote team
“It’s a huge miss to assume that after recruiting is done and paperwork is signed that there’s nothing left for a company to do.”Take it back to your team:
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Onboarding creates a big first impression for your new hires. At Ntropy (then a Seed Stage startup), Elliott used building the onboarding process as an excuse to document what was living in the founder’s heads, “They have an idea, they’ve raised money, but how do we onboard people to what that vision is?”
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A big part of onboarding is communicating the biggest initiatives, and why they’re important. You have the opportunity to create transparency around what everyone is working on, and inherently create focus, empowering people to see where they can best apply themselves for impact.
Drop 4. The power of a pre-read for your Annual Planning process
“Annual planning was an opportunity for our CEO and his direct reports to come together and talk about the next 3 to 5 years. It’s really a chance to debate and discuss our plans, ultimately to align on a strategy.My role was to prepare a pre-read with the CEO on what his thesis was on the company for the next 3 - 5 years. The pre-read would be shared in advance for comments from other execs. Based on what topics received the most attention, we’d then shape the agenda.”
Take it back to your team:
- While Elliott’s example is from a Series D company, there’s lots to learn for early stage teams: the best company planning starts with a top down opinion from leadership. That opinion is commented on by execs, and used to pluck out what will block the teams from getting there. Offsite discussions form based on the blockers.